November 9, 2007
Friday

To qualify as a post for Holidailies, a piece has to have at least fifty words or one picture. I’ve gotten behind in my NaBloPoMo work (where posting every single day is expected, not batch posting or consistently posting a day or two behind). So Fridge Friday comes at a good time. Herewith, the state of the perishable food supply with less than a week before I leave and Ron starts his temporary period of bachelor foraging.

Things look a little more orderly than they did last week. The large container beside the Pepsi bottle has the last of the chicken corn soup I bought on Tuesday when I voted. Our polling place is in a senior citizen apartment complex that sells soup and baked goods on election days, a reason to go out to vote even in a season like this, when all the contests were ho-hum lists of unopposed incumbents for school board and township commissioner. To the left under the meat drawer and beside the Cool-Whip is a container of Earth Balance Natural Buttery Spread, a 100% vegan concoction that is the only thing I was served at the vegan bread and breakfast I used to stay in in Vermont that I wanted to have again. It tastes just like butter, and I am someone who won’t allow very many taste-alikes in the house because, really, they don’t. Its supermarket cousin, Smart Balance, has an aftertaste that I dislike. Earth Balance used to be available only at the health food store way the other way from where I usually shop, and I was reluctant to go there just for that. Now the Giant is stocking it, and I bought it last week when my cholesterol numbers made me scream.

The Cool Whip is thawed but not opened yet. I will probably use it on Sunday to make the same low-cal (well, lower-cal) version of Black Forest Cake that I made last year to take to my congregation’s pot luck dinner after our annual meeting.

My description of Ron as a bachelor forager for the next month is actually not accurate, and not fair to him. He is a chef by early training (his family had the most popular Italian restaurant in Hershey, Pennsylvania for more than fifty years) and really does eat well. The shot of the freezer at right shows his only food vice: Turkey Hill no sugar, no fat chocolate “ice cream.” I do not know how they are allowed to call it “ice cream.” It is beaker dust! Frozen beaker dust! But it is high in fiber (again, an exclamation point is called for)!

This time next week I’ll have been to the grocery store in Sheridan, Wyoming. I picture scenes from the Saturday morning tv westerns of my childhood, Lassie’s mom or Peter Graves and Joey from Fury, the Story of a Horse and the Boy Who Loves Him loading boxes into the back of the pickup or the buckboard, a supply that will have to last a week because the trip is too long and too arduous to undertake more often. Do they have Turkey Hill stuff in Wyoming?

To be included on the notify list, e-mail me:
margaretdeangelis [at] gmail [dot] com (replace the brackets with @ and a period)